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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS/ 

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KINGDOM OF THE 

SERBS, CROATS AND SLOVENES: 

OFFICIAL INFORMATION BUREAU 

WASHINGTON 



Voyclav M. Yovanov itch. 
Director, 



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(* a- ^ «- f'^ :' 



, \ev e^v\ t <' , 1 ^ M] . . Jvn ^ p S 



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53 4 Southern Bail.dingj 
Telephoive: Franklin 6722, 



MhIJOPANDIM 
DALHATIAN QUESTION. 



ppTrpT^^TTtTD TO T^F PFACF CO>FF^FNCE IN pa^^IS BY THE DELEGATION OF THE 
KINGDOM OF SFPBS, CFOATS AND SLO"\/ENES. 



I. - Geograph i cal Arg;ument s, 
Dalmatia has no natural frontiers. It is not a geographical tmity 
which has always heen contained within the same boundaries, "but a creation 
of hi story _, having had during various epochs different frontiers. Roman 
Dalrnatia, for instance, included Eastern Istria up to the Hiver Arsa, all 
the islands of the Adriatic, all the present Dalmatia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, 
Montenegro, up to the river Boyana, and Serbia, as far as the Morava. 
Dalmatia with its present frontiers only dates from 1815, while 
in the l-liddle Ages she -A'as reduced to four or five maritime towns and 
some islands, Balnatia is, on the whole, only the western coast of the 
Balkan Peninsula, intimately "bound up with it not only by its geographical, 
geological, orographical- and in general its morphological structure, 
tut also by ethnic laws, by its social atmosphere, commonity of race and 
political ideal. Istria and Dalmatia, with all its islands of the Adriatic^ 
are nothing bat chains of the Dinar ic Alps of v\^ich the sea has invaded 



NOV ■ 25 »921 



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^ the valleys. In a word, Istria and Dalmatia constitute the Western 
littoral of tha Balkan Peninsula, its right lung. 

The Dinaric Alps do not in any way prevent the trade of the 
western Balkan littoral with its hinterland/ as the history of Rome and 
the history of the Croats and Serhs prove. There still exist today 
P-orran roads which facilitate conrcerce between the Balkan continent and 
the sea, roads well known to Italian merchants, who nBke use of them to 
go to Bosnia to purchase cattle. Two railways connect Dalmatia with 
Bosnia and Herzegovina. It would have had others if Austria had not pre- 
vented their construction. 

The nam.es of places in Palmatia prove with absolute certainty 
that that country belongs to the same geographic and ethnic group as the 
rest of Balkans, because it would be difficult to find one per cent of 
names of a liitin origin, even on the islands furthest ranoved from the 
Dalmatian coast. Solely, the names of the principal towns and certain of 
the islands were Italianized, or are of Illyrian, Greek or Latin origin. 

Therefore, Dalmatia and Istria with all the isles and islets of 
the Fastern Adriatic, form, from every point of view, an indivisible 
whole, living with and from, the Balkan Peninsula* Any attempt to detach 
the least part, the least fragment would be a veritable mutilation. 

II. - n':> s torical Arguments. 

Dalm.atia, by its fortunate geographical situation, has always 
awaked the covetous desires of conquerors. The list of all the invasions 
it has had to suffer during the course of centuries would be a long one. 
The Romans, under the pretext of punishing pirates, undertook its conquest 
from the end of the 3rd century before Christ. 



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They had to carry on ].ong and difficult wars and could only put 
the country under their yoke under the conir.and of Tiberius^ in the year 
12 A, D. Velleius '^atercaluis states that the Dalrratians rehelled more than 
two hundred times against the rJornans. On the other hand^ neither the 
Illyrians nor their successors the Jugoslavs ever undertook any ivar of 
conquest against' Italy. 

After the Jugoslavs occupied the provinces of ancient Illyr la 
and were definitely estahlished there, the western branch, the Croats, 
founded a State on the Adriatic littoral of ivhich the centre was the region 
which constitutes the present day Dalmatia. Before the reign of the •• 
Serbian dynasty of the Nemanyitch, during and even after their rule^ Southern. 
Dalmatia formed part of the Serbian State. The Croatian State was" con- 
stituted as a Kingdom and during the 12th century was attached to Hungary 
in the form of a personal union. From its foundation it struggled against 
the "Republic of Venice, I'Aaich pretended to dominate the Dalmatian coast. 
In the struggle which lasted eight centuries, Venice played the part of 
the aggressor and the Jogoslavs never did anything ^^t defend themselves. 
Our people fought with tenacity for their country and their liberty. They 
only succumbed to the attacks of Venice when the Turks succeeded in destroy- 
ing their political independence. A striking example of what this struggle 
for the defense of their country was rray be found in the history of Zara 
which, although conquered seventeen timies, always shook off the yoke of 
Venice, 

The Venetian domination, which lasted as long as the Turkish 
domination in Serbia, was an epoch of intellectual and economic decadence 
for Dalmatia. ""^Thile the free Hagusa was flourishing and, under the influence 



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of its prosperity, was able to create an admirable civilization, which 
. cauGed it to be given the title of the "Jugoslav Athens" (the literature 
of Eagasa at this time is now the patrimony of the Serbo-Croatian litera- 
ture), the remainder of Dalmatia, dominated by Venice, offered the 
spectacle of the greatest misery, due to the negligence of the authorities. 
The French, who occupied it in 1806, did not find there a single public 
school and not a single mile of roads. Under the French domination 
(1805 to 1815), when the first schools were founded and the first roads 
constructed, Dalmatia began to revive. But in falling, in 1815, under the 
domination of Austria, it was again abandoned for a century. 

The national and liberal movement in Europe, due to the French 
Revolution, in the first half of the 19th century brought about an 
awakening of the nation's conscience among the Jugoslavs of Dalmatia, 
a conscience which had sl-umbered during five centuries of foreign domina- 
tion- The struggle for the use of the national language in the administra- 
tion and in the schools, for power in its communes and in the provincial 
administration (a struggle directed against the Austrian system) began 
in the year 1860. In this struggle the Jugoslav national idea was victor icois 
and the Austrian Government was forced to admit the language v\iiich was 
spoken by nearly the entire population, both in the schools and in the 
administration. The Italian bureaucracy which lost, in consequence, its 
predominance on the Jugoslav masses, constituted the nucleus of the present 
Italian iminority in the towns and it is this minority of 3 per cent of the 
population which still pretends to dominate the other 97 per cent. 

Already forty years before the present world war, the Jugoslavs, 
'by their own efforts and contrary to the intentions of the Austriah G-overn- 



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ment, become roasters of all the autonomous institutions of the province.- 
Of the 85 miinicipal councils existing in Dalmatia 85 are Slav and one ' 
only, that of Zara, is Italian. And even that one would have fallen into 
the hands of the Slavs if the Austrian Government had permitted the 
adoption of universal suffrage. Of the 41 deputies of the Dalrr.atian Diet 
6 only were Italian, all elected in the town of Zara on account of the 
old system of voting, while the remaining 35 were Serbo-Croats . All the 
deputies to the parliament of Vienna, elven in nimbers, elected by universal. 
suffrage, were Serbo-Croats. An enormous Slav majority was elected to the 
Dalmatian Diet and did not cease to demand the union with the sister 
provinces of Croatia and Slavonia with which, in the Middle Ages, it had 
formed a powerful state. Austria-Hungary always opposed these legitimate 
aspirations (and that in complete accord with the Italian political party 
of Dalmatia) . Austria-Hungry is now dead for good and the Dalmatia,n 
people hopes that with Austria has also died the iniquitous system it 
represented. 

III. - Ethnical, s tatistical a nd p ol iti cal a rg'-'memts^. 

The strongest argument in modern politics to decide to whom a 
country should belong is the ethnical one. Now, it would be difficult to 
find a country ethnically more pure or m.ore homogeneous than Dali^tia.. 
The following are the statistical data: 

The official census of 1910 established a percentage of 96.19^ 
of inhabitants of the Serbo-Croat language, 2.84 per cent of the Italian 
language and 0,75 per cent of other nationalities, that is to say 610,659 
Serbo-Croat s and 18,028 Italians. 

In 1851, when the political power was excl-usively in the hands of 
the Italians, the returns gave 378,676 Slavs and 14,645 Italians. In 1857, 



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when the Govenment was still favorable to the Italians and the latter 
were in power in Dalrratia, the statistics gave 415,628 Slavs and 16^000 
Italians. The population speaking Italian therefore always remains in 
a proportion of 3 to 4 per cent. That it does not increase in the same 
■proportion as the Jugoslavs is due to the fact that it is exclusively 
urban, "being composed of people belonging to the lower and middle class 
and not including any inhabitants in the country. ., 

One part of this population is formed of immigrants from Italy 
and the other of Italianized natives. There does not exist in Dalmatia 
an autochtonous Italian population. The immigrants are descendants of - 
the Venetian functionaries who remained in Dalmatia in the 17th and 18th 
centuries, or of Austrian functionaries (originally from the Lombardo- 
Venetian Kingdom) who established themselves in the country during the 
first half of the 19th century, and finally small m.erchants, artizans, 
sailors or fisherman who arrived recently from Italy and who have formed 
new Italian colonies similar to those in Iferseilles, Tiinis and the Argentine. 
The remainder is caaaposed of Slavs, Italianized in the schools or adherents 
of the Italian political party, which quite recently still held power. 
Nevertheless all these Dalmatians speaking the Italian language have always 
declared that they were not Italians but Slavs of Italian civilization,. 
Until the end of the 19th century, they called themselves "Slavo-Dalmatians", 
opposing this denomination to the national names of Croats and Serbs. 
Their only popular political journal was printed exclusively in the Serbo- 
Croatian language and bore the name of "Pravi Daliratinac" (which means, 
in Serbo-Croatian, the "true Dalmatian"). 

The ethnical character of the town of Zara itself does not differ 



m any way fron. the ether mimatian towns. Zara was already Slav- in the 
I2tn cenl-ory,. A chronicle of the year 1177 states that the Pope ihexander 
lil^ when he care to the town, was accompanied in procession to the church 

of St, Anastasia while hjinns j,3_MlP^3.l§yi.J3Zk^^RQ ( illorum lingua 

slavonica.,.) were sung. (I^'arlati, III, 3.) 

In its struggle against Venice it showed more resistance than 
any of its sister towns. Though its Slav population was more than once 
exterminated or dispersed hy the Venetians, the base nevertheless remained 
Slav. Today Zara is a little tovTn of functionaries, the last "bulwark of 
an Italian bareai.?.cracy in a purely Slav country. Having been under the 
Venetian and A.ustrian dominations the capital of the province, it is the 
headquarters of the greatest number of Italianized, functionaries, who^ 
with their families and their dependents, constitute the majority of the 
popilation. But this nrnjority is limAted to the urban part of 7ara, to 
the town alone, without the suburbs or environs^ for if one considers 
the entire coinriunity of Zara it is found that the Slavs are in'B...-pvctijttiri'i 
of 3 to 1 Italian, and in the district of Zai-a this proportion is 7 to 1, 

As to the Daimati3.n islands the po^xilation is purely Slav and 
possesses highly developed national conscience- These are Slav to s'lch 
a point that in the Island of Lissa, for instance (the one the furthest from 
the mainland.), out of 10,041 one cannot even find one per cent of Italians. 

The Serbo-Croatian literat-ure had its roots principally in the 
islands which were rivals of Sago^a in the poetic art. The most ancient 
inscriptions on stone in the Serbo-Croatian language are found at Starigrad 
(Cittavecchia), a little town situated in the island of Hvar (Lesina). 
Inscriptions even in glagolite (old Slavonic) characters are found at 



Suchurai on Lesina. 

During a struggle which has lasted a thousand years the Dal- 
matians have kept the old-Slavonic language in the liturgy of the Roman 
Catholic church where, even at Zara, as in the times of Pope Alexander 
III_, the Slav hymns still are sung. 

Calmatia is the purest Slav country and five centuries of for- 
eign domination could not denationalize it; its conscience of being Slav 
is a more living force then in any region in the Balkans. The Dalicatian 
Diet, at the opening of each new session, has never failed to demand, in 
a special ,and solemji address, the union of Dalmatia with Croatia. Let 
Dalmatia "be given the possibility of freely expressing its sentiments and 
it, is more than certain that it will affirm, by an almost unanimous vote, 
her desire to be reunited to the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. 
IV < - Strategical Arguments.. 

The Southern Slavs had not and will never have any desire for 
conquest. They are a peaceful people who only desire to live in peace v/ith 
the v^ole world. 

Their geographical position, exposed as it is to covetous desires 
and to invasion, has forced them to become a warlike people, but only for 
the defence of their native soil. It is for this reason that they desire 
natural and sure frontiers, and they believe that the best and most natural 
of all frontiers is, v/ithout doubt, the sea. Thus they cannot tolerate the 
installation of any power on the eastern coast of the Adriatic or on the 
islands which forms an integral part of it. They consider such occupa- 
tions as stragetic bridgeheads, made in view of new conquests at the ej^ense 
of their territory. The islands of the eastern coast of the Adriatic smy be 



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regarded as fortresses - "but only as defensive fortresses and not as 
offensive fortresses. These islands, in the hands of a foreign power^ 
would really be fortresses directed against our country. If such a 
state of things '^s created, our State would lose all its liberty of action, 
it would fall, by the very fact, under foreign domination, and would find 
itself in a perpetual state of insecurity. In the constant danger of being 
suddenly attached by an enemy army, it could not devote itself to the task 
of developing public education and economic prosperity, but woiild be forced 
to concentrate all its energies on the creation of defenses against the 
menace of foreign invasion. Its force would be completely paralyzed and its 
sovereignity illusory. 

The assertion, according to which the possession of the eastern coast 
of the Adriatic, or at least some of the islands, would be necessary for 
Italy to safeguard her western coast from the danger of a pretended aggression 
on our part, has no basis on fact. History teaches us that, in this region, 
the movement of conquest has always gone from the western tov;ard the eastern 
coast (Roman and Venetian invasions) and never in the contrary direction, 
Italy was attacked and conquered, by sea, by adversaries coming from the 
South (the Ca.rthagenians and Arabs) or coming from the West (Spaniards), but 
never from the East, If the eastern littoral of the Adriatic is better 
provided with ports and gulfs, the western coast is richer in population and 
natural resources which are the basis of all m/ilitary and political force. 
It is for this reason that the eastern coast has never been able to dominate 
the western coast, while the latter has, on several occasions, conquered the 
eastern coast, not with a defensive aim but with the well-determined inten- 
tion of establishing its domination on the Balkan Peninsula. It was thus 



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that the Romns acted in ancient times, and, in a more recent epoch, the- 
Venetians; it is still what those desire to realise who today claim for Italy 
a part of the eastern littoral and invoke the necessity of protecting +--he 
Italian coast. 

The libert5'- of the Adriatic Sea will only be assured when opposite 
a rich and populous Italy a State is found on the eastern side capable of 
establishing equilibrium. And since the predominance in men and natural 
riches will always be on the side of Italy, mistress of the fertile and popu- 
lous valley of the Po, the strategic advantage to our state, resulting from 
the possession of the coast i^vhich naturally belongs to it in the basin of 
the Adriatic, should be all the more assured to us. 

So long as these elements of maritime supremacy remain separate, the 
liberty of navigation will be guaranteed to all nations. But the day v\/hen 
Italy will add the strategic factor to her economic preponderance, by install- 
ing herself on the eastern coast, the Adriatic sea will at once become an 
Italian lake. 

V_. - Economic Arg ume nts.. 
The annexation of Dalmatia by a foreign State would certainly entail 
for it an economic decadence and would create an incurable wound in the organ- 
ization of our State. The eastern coast, rocky and poor, does not possess the 
conditions for an independent economic life. Its natural function is to be 
the outlet of the rich plains of the valleys of the Danube, the Save, the 
Bosna and the Fx)rava to the sea, and it is from these countries that it ought 
to live. Separated from the res^; of cijr country Dalmatia could not lead a 
normal life, as is dem.onstrated by the five centuries of her history under the 
Venetian and Austrian dominations.. 



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The principal agricult-ural products of the eastern coast of the 
Adriatic are wine and oil, which were exported to Austria, to Hxingary and 
to Bosnia. Foreign competition, which will have no limits, would cause such 
a depreciation of these products that the Dalmatians would have no means of 
■procru-lng bread and other food-stuffs of prime necessity. The best proof 
of this affirmation lies in the terrible consequences resulting from a 
clause in the Italo-Austrian treaty of commerce which permitted the free im- 
portation of the wines of Italy into Austria- Hungary and which brou^t about 
the economic ruin of Dalmatia, Already in the Middle Ages the influence of 
the close relations between Dalmatia and its hinterland made themselves 
felt, f^erbian comnerce, at that epoch, was directed in the greater part 
toward Dalm^atia, 

On the contrary, in our State, Dalm.atia would sell her produce at 
advantageous prices and wo\ild buy foodstuffs of prijne necessity cheaper 
than elsewhere, the importations and exportations being naturally and justly 
balanced. 

Under foreign domination the ports of ralm.atia could not pretend to 
become ports of transit for the commerce with the hinterland. On the contrary, 
if they belonged to our State, they would undergo a great development as ports 
of exportation for the natural riches of the adjacent Jugoslav countries. 

VT , - Conclusion, 
All these reasons militate in favor of the incorporation of laimatia 
in the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. But the strongest of all, 
is the firm, decided and resolute will of the Dalm.atian people to be reunited 
with its national State and the right which our nation possesses to its 
territorial integrity. A solution of the Dalm-atian question which' would be 
contrary to the will of the population, would inevitably plant the germs of 
new conflicts. 



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